Hellifax (22 page)

And in doing so, they lost Tenner.

As Tenner took the steps three at a time down to the first floor, one glaring thought went off in his head like a klaxon. How?

Another thought shoved aside the first. Who was the stranger?

He didn’t recognize the man, and he’d certainly taken measures to ensure no one knew his true intentions or who he was. He ran through the historic section for a short distance, came to an intersection, and veered toward the water.

Who was he?

A friend of one of his victims? Possible, but he doubted it. Tenner made certain that he was well alone with all of his potential prey. Someone he’d left for dead, but had been mistaken? Another possibility, but unlikely. He checked all of his kills to ensure they were truly dead and, realistically, no one was in any shape to come searching for him once he’d finished playing with his toys.

So, who was he?

He didn’t have any idea. All he knew was his plan to leisurely kill the survivors—one at a time and in secret, savoring each death like a fine and incredibly rare bottle of wine—was finished. He turned another corner and made his way toward the main entrance of a hotel near Purdy’s Wharf. Like the office building, the hotel was surprisingly free of the destruction that had gutted the other buildings. Tenner suspected the place, whose name was ripped off the front, had been used as a barracks and command post due to the number of MRE caches and discarded packaging tossed into the numerous garbage receptacles outside the building. He quickly strode by a check-in counter dulled by dust and grime. Tenner stooped and felt underneath the counter for the self-generating flashlight he’d found and left there days earlier. He grabbed it and took a carpeted stairway down to the basement.

Before he’d met up with the six wanderers, he’d taken the time to search the surrounding premises for anything of interest besides the ruined automatic weapons. He had found several things that made him cock an eyebrow, but the one that had surprised him the most lay in the guts of this particular hotel.

He descended into the black soup at the bottom of the stairs. He held up his flashlight and thumbed the switch. Light blazed ahead of him. Wasting no time, he went past a laundry area stuffed with partially-filled bins of soiled bedding that would never be washed. Just beyond that was another room filled with metal piping, ventilation ductwork, boilers, and huge air-conditioning units. He ignored smaller storage areas along the dark corridor, half-expecting an undead fright at any moment. The light illuminated a heavy, grey-painted door at the end of the corridor, with “No Admittance” stamped across its surface in block letters. Any locked door begged Tenner to open it, no matter the cost. This one in particular had proven to be a stubborn son of a bitch, but in the end, he’d pried it open with a crowbar. The locks had been ruined in the process, but he didn’t give a damn about that.

Tenner pulled the door open with a squeal and left it that way. He was certain the others hadn’t discovered this place, nor had he revealed the location of the passageway to them. If they did catch his scent and followed, he’d be somewhat disappointed, but for reasons his pursuers wouldn’t understand. The light revealed another stone stairway, surrounded by carefully cut rock leading down into the depths of the earth.

Tenner knew Halifax had been a prized harbor for Allied shipping during the Second World War and had been heavily defended against the threat of Nazi incursions. What he hadn’t known until he’d started exploring the area was the addition of a tunnel system that ran from the downtown waterfront, now labeled the historic section of the city, to Citadel Hill, once known as Fort George.

He descended three flights of steps. The fitted stone wall ended before a wide entryway and a concrete corridor with exposed lengths of iron braces. The passage stretched off into darkness, toward Citadel Hill. The way was musty, the air stale, and as cold as a freezer. It had been good fortune to discover the secret tunnel, and he’d been even more fortunate when he found what waited at the end. The national armories of the city had all been ravaged and destroyed in a battle that had to have been truly epic, leaving Tenner at his journey’s end and feeling despondent.

But he discovered not all of the munitions had been used or rendered useless.

They had only been moved.

Tenner plunged through the underground depths, threading a tunnel wide enough to drive a jeep through if one could be found. Pipes ran along the otherwise bare walls of the tunnel, plunging into the concrete at points and re-emerging further down the line. Iron railway tracks, stamped into the concrete, slunk off into the dark void ahead, and he knew that three old rail carts lay draped in cobwebs perhaps a kilometer away, positioned at the bottom of the stairwell underneath the Citadel. Munitions had no doubt been transported back and forth along the passage at one point in time, and Tenner suspected that there were other underground tunnel systems and chambers besides this one. He couldn’t imagine what other secrets lay underneath Halifax, but he envisioned the complex to be huge. Once he took care of the people above, he planned to do some more exploring.

If there was anything else down here, he’d find it. But that was for another day.

The light zigzagged on the walls as he ran. He controlled his breathing so he wouldn’t exhaust himself. Tenner eventually slowed to a walk, placing one hand on a hip as he caught his breath. He tipped the flashlight up at the ceiling, not six inches above his head, seeing hairline cracks in the surface.

It was while he studied the cracks he heard it.

A subtle whisper of movement, coming from the darkness ahead, soft enough that if he were truly deep in thought, he would have missed it entirely. As it was, his senses snapped into alertness, and he used his free hand to pull out the Glock. Tenner crossed his wrists like he’d seen done in the movies, penetrating the dark with the flashlight while pointing the gun in the same direction. He held his breath.

And heard it again.

The sound made a crease appear in Tenner’s forehead. There weren’t any zombies down here––Moe as the rest of the survivors had referred to the dead. He’d made certain of that when he came through the first time. He supposed there was a possibility that a zombie had entered the main tunnel from a side passage he’d missed.

“I hear you,” Tenner said slyly, waiting for the answering moan. One advantage of Moe being mindless was that they became predictable. There was nothing devious about the undead. If they heard you, they would moan. It was simply an undefined motor reflex, not a warning or a call to others of similar decomposing ilk. Moe didn’t utilize any cunning hunting tactics, nor did they sit and wait for their prey. As feeders, they were as mindless as any single-celled organism. The only thing one had to be careful about with Moe was numbers, and when and where they appeared.

He hadn’t checked the load, but Tenner knew he had a few rounds remaining in the Glock, and he had two extra magazines in his coat. And of course there were all manner of goodies waiting for him back at the truck. He only had to get there.

But something was approaching from up ahead.

The sound increased. It grew from a whisper to an unending scratching that sounded as if it were close to the floor.

A crawler, no doubt. Many a zombie had had its legs chewed away or its feet worn down to raw ivory knobs by walking barefoot. The horror of walking the earth fascinated Tenner. The dead would walk until their shoes gave way, until the asphalt rubbed the padding off the soles of their feet, wearing them down to the bone, then shaving the bone away and causing Moe to walk on stubs of flesh, until even that wore away and they toppled over. Tenner had never seen the entire process. The virus that turned people into reanimated corpses also had the surprising side effect of toughening human flesh—which made him think they weren’t entirely dead—but he could envision the timeline sped up, seeing a turned person wearing away their shoes, then their feet, then even their shins. They’d fall over at some point and start crawling, then the ground would wear away the front of their clothes, their skin, the tissue underneath, until finally getting to the bone. At some point, the musculature would no longer be able to pull its mass along, so Moe would eventually be rendered immobile. Until…

The murmuring of movement drew closer, still hidden by darkness. Tenner did not proceed any farther. It was always best to let the creature come to you. The sound seemed to spread out along the width of the floor, like the satiny touch of a blanket being dragged along the ground.

Or branches.

Lots
of branches.

Tenner tensed up, no longer certain what was coming toward him in the dark was Moe. He flexed his fingers on the grip of the gun. Something was getting closer, and it wasn’t a corpse. Nor was it a group of corpses, which held no fear for him.

This was something else.

The sound became louder, until it filled his ears and caused him to cringe in puzzlement. Tenner held his breath and let the sound slowly bloat in the tunnel, loud enough that he felt his scrotum go tight with unease. He took a step backward involuntarily, then stopped himself. There was nothing in the new world that he feared. Nothing.

The hissing of branches grew louder, and he could almost detect grainy crashes within the noise itself, like a radio channel spewing static. A smell hit him then, as putrid as any clustering of Moe.

The stench of dead flesh.

But what
was
it? He pointed the beam of light at the farthest possible point, thrusting back the black and illuminating only bare concrete, pipes, and iron railroad tracks. He swept the light from one side of the wall to the other, thinking he detected movement in the vault-like dark.

Seconds passed, and Tenner took a breath.

The sound grew, swelling in the blackness, until…

Rats entered the field of light in an ebony front that caused him to back up two steps in shock. He panned the wide beam back and forth to uncover a veritable
flood
of rodents moving along the concrete floor, no more than twenty feet from him, their claws causing the raspy cacophony that had so puzzled him. The tunnel channeled the tide of rats directly at him. They filled the width of the tunnel and beyond the reach of the flashlight. Tenner stopped for a moment and stared in stunned disbelief.

Rats! A wall of rats!

The creatures moved strangely, however. They didn’t move in that cautious, scampering flurry of legs normal rats used to find cover from predators.

Then it became obvious to him, as obvious as seeing the vermin––some with bodies longer than his hand. Exposed ribs and backbones gleamed in the flashlight’s glare. The foremost ranks of this new foe were a decaying mash of flesh and hair and bone on a scale Tenner had never contemplated. Like their human cousins, the virus powered their undead flesh along in a nasty, mouldy carpet of unending hunger, the ground wearing down their claws and no doubt fraying their underbellies––but Tenner couldn’t see that just yet. All he could see were these wretched creatures, no longer fearful, dragging themselves toward him en masse, on whatever limbs still worked, seeking only to fasten their rodent maws upon his flesh and chew.

Tenner backed up another step while panning the light right to left, surveying the sheer scope of the army seeping toward him with all the intensity of a burst vat of tar. He pointed his gun at the front ranks, knowing that a mere bullet would have little effect on the swarm.

Then something latched onto his boots from behind.

He shined the flashlight at his own feet and stared at the layer of rats teeming about his ankles, attacking him from behind. Rats gnawed on his boots, stretched themselves up past his ankles, whiskers oddly unmoving. Tenner did an awkward jig on the spot, dancing on the heads of several horrid attackers and crushing them underfoot. Some he only partially flattened, and he saw the creatures haul their squished flanks or shoulders off the concrete to pursue him, until a second and third layer of rats crawled over their injured brothers, seeming to swallow them. The sight of these half-crumpled creatures still moving unnerved him in a way he never thought possible. People didn’t bother him in the least, but rats and spiders had always had a creepy hold of his psyche.

Jerking his feet high above the swarm, he energetically tip-toed to one side. The options open to him were few. He could proceed ahead, or he could retreat.

Tenner plunged forward into the dark. He slipped in places as he stepped on several rats at once, but he didn’t fall. He drifted closer to the wall and took a second to stuff his Glock into a side pocket while switching his flashlight to his right hand. With his left hand placed against the wall for extra support, he forged ahead. The rank smell coming off the creatures filled his lungs with each breath and threatened to do more than just screw up his face.
Everywhere.
The rats covered the floor, and he pulled several along with him with every second step as they tried gnawing through his motorcycle boots. Their claws scrabbling on the concrete sounded like muted fingernails across a chalkboard, and Tenner knew anyone of lesser mental fortitude would have been driven to the brink of losing control from both the sight and sound of the dead things in the tunnel. Some scurried along the pipes he clung to, and he had to swat them from the metal. The light beam bobbed and weaved over the creatures’ backs, and Tenner believed for a moment that the furry tide was actually becoming thicker. He couldn’t see where the rats had gotten into the tunnel; he slogged through their depths, halfway up to his shins. Their voices hummed in his ears. A stumble almost brought him to his knees, forcing him to keep both feet on the floor, and he started sliding his feet forward as if cross-country skiing, bulldozing through the swarm sloshing heavily around his lower legs. He could feel the little jaws attempting to latch onto his boots, actually pinching the leather against his flesh. For a moment, the morbid thought of actually
lying
down in them, like a seething meadow, occurred to him.